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1When Science Confronts Philosophy: Three Case StudiesGlobal Philosophy 30 (5): 479-500. 2020.This paper examines three cases of the clash between science and philosophy: Zeno’s paradoxes, the Frame Problem, and a recent attempt to experimentally refute skepticism. In all three cases, the relevant science claims to have resolved the purported problem. The sciences, construing the term broadly, are mathematics, artificial intelligence, and psychology. The goal of this paper is to show that none of the three scientific solutions work. The three philosophical problems remain as vibrant as e…Read more
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1Science Generates Limit ParadoxesGlobal Philosophy 25 (4): 409-432. 2015.The sciences occasionally generate discoveries that undermine their own assumptions. Two such discoveries are characterized here: the discovery of apophenia by cognitive psychology and the discovery that physical systems cannot be locally bounded within quantum theory. It is shown that such discoveries have a common structure and that this common structure is an instance of Priest’s well-known Inclosure Schema. This demonstrates that science itself is dialetheic: it generates limit paradoxes. Ho…Read more
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33How Much Like Us Do We Want AIs to Be?Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 28 (2): 137-168. 2024.Replicating or exceeding human intelligence, not just in particular domains but in general, has always been a major goal of Artificial Intelligence (AI). We argue here that “human intelligence” is not only ill-defined, but often conflated with broader aspects of human psychology. Standard arguments for replicating it are morally unacceptable. We then suggest a reframing: that the proper goal of AI is not to replicate humans, but to complement them by creating diverse intelligences capable of col…Read more
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1088How Much Like Us Do We Want AIs to Be?Techné Research in Philosophy and Technology 28 (2): 137-168. 2024.Replicating or exceeding human intelligence, not just in particular domains but in general, has always been a major goal of Artificial Intelligence (AI). We argue here that “human intelligence” is not only ill-defined, but often conflated with broader aspects of human psychology. Standard arguments for replicating it are morally unacceptable. We then suggest a reframing: that the proper goal of AI is not to replicate humans, but to complement them by creating diverse intelligences capable of col…Read more
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111The Great Philosophical Objections to AI: The History and Legacy of the AI WarsBloomsbury Academic. 2021.This book surveys and examines the most famous philosophical arguments against building a machine with human-level intelligence. From claims and counter-claims about the ability to implement consciousness, rationality, and meaning, to arguments about cognitive architecture, the book presents a vivid history of the clash between the philosophy and AI. Tellingly, the AI Wars are mostly quiet now. Explaining this crucial fact opens new paths to understanding the current resurgence AI (especially, d…Read more
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62The Allure of the Serial KillerIn Fritz Allhoff & S. Waller (eds.), Serial Killers ‐ Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: The Allure of Monsters Explaining the Allure: First Look Stalking the Deeper Reasons Closing in for the Kill Removing Empathy The Prison of Rules Conclusion.
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62Editorial: Epistemic Feelings: Phenomenology, Implementation, and Role in CognitionFrontiers in Psychology 11. 2020.
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1619Why Philosophy Makes No ProgressGlobal Philosophy 33 (2): 1-14. 2023.This paper offers an explanation for why some parts of philosophy have made no progress. Philosophy has made no progress because it cannot make progress. And it cannot because of the nature of the phenomena philosophy is tasked with explaining—all of it involves consciousness. Here, it will not be argued directly that consciousness is intractable. Rather, it will be shown that a specific version of the problem of consciousness is unsolvable. This version is the Problem of the Subjective and Obje…Read more
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3858Realism and Anti-Realism Are Both True (and False)Mind and Matter 18 (2): 121-148. 2020.The perennial nature of some of philosophy’s deepest problems is a puzzle. Here, one problem, the realism–anti-realism debate, and one type of explanation for its longevity, are examined. It is argued that realism and anti-realism form a dialetheic pair: While they are in fact each other’s logical opposite, nevertheless, both are true (and both false). First, several reasons why one might think such a thing are presented. These reasons are merely the beginning, however. In the following sections…Read more
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1051When Science Confronts Philosophy: Three Case StudiesAxiomathes 30 (5): 479-500. 2020.This paper examines three cases of the clash between science and philosophy: Zeno’s paradoxes, the Frame Problem, and a recent attempt to experimentally refute skepticism. In all three cases, the relevant science claims to have resolved the purported problem. The sciences, construing the term broadly, are mathematics, artificial intelligence, and psychology. The goal of this paper is to show that none of the three scientific solutions work. The three philosophical problems remain as vibrant as e…Read more
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1129Equivalence of the Frame and Halting ProblemsAlgorithms 13 (175): 1-9. 2020.The open-domain Frame Problem is the problem of determining what features of an open task environment need to be updated following an action. Here we prove that the open-domain Frame Problem is equivalent to the Halting Problem and is therefore undecidable. We discuss two other open-domain problems closely related to the Frame Problem, the system identification problem and the symbol-grounding problem, and show that they are similarly undecidable. We then reformulate the Frame Problem as a quant…Read more
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125Review of The Death of Philosophy: Reference and Self-Reference in Contemporary Thought, by Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel, trans. Richard A. Lynch (review)Essays in Philosophy 13 (2): 605-610. 2012.
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Computer Thought: Propositional Attitudes and Meta-KnowledgeDissertation, The University of Arizona. 1985.Though artificial intelligence scientists frequently use words such as "belief" and "desire" when describing the computational capacities of their programs and computers, they have completely ignored the philosophical and psychological theories of belief and desire. Hence, their explanations of computational capacities which use these terms are frequently little better than folk-psychological explanations. Conversely, though philosophers and psychologists attempt to couch their theories of belie…Read more
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16Do Noncassical Worlds Entail Dualism? (review)Constructivist Foundations 12 (3): 275-276. 2017.The vast differences between the objective, classical realm of our everyday lives and any nonclassical realm have worried researchers for almost a century. No attempt at resolving the differences or explaining them away has ever worked. Maybe there are two realms, the classical and the nonclassical, and maybe they are paradoxical.
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3043ComputationalismSocial Epistemology 4 (2): 135-154. 1990.This paper argues for a noncognitiveist computationalism in the philosophy of mind. It further argues that both humans and computers have intentionality, that is, their mental states are semantical -- they are about things in their worlds.
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1854The Paradox of Consciousness and the Realism/Anti-Realism DebateLogos Architekton 3 (1): 7-37. 2009.Beginning with the paradoxes of zombie twins, we present an argument that dualism is both true and false. We show that avoiding this contradiction is impossible. Our diagnosis is that consciousness itself engenders this contradiction by producing contradictory points of view. This result has a large effect on the realism/anti-realism debate, namely, it suggests that this debate is intractable, and furthermore, it explains why this debate is intractable. We close with some comments on what our re…Read more
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1125AI and the Mechanistic Forces of DarknessJ. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI 7 (2): 155-161. 1995.Under the Superstition Mountains in central Arizona toil those who would rob humankind o f its humanity. These gray, soulless monsters methodically tear away at our meaning, our subjectivity, our essence as transcendent beings. With each advance, they steal our freedom and dignity. Who are these denizens of darkness, these usurpers of all that is good and holy? None other than humanity’s arch-foe: The Cognitive Scientists -- AI researchers, fallen philosophers, psychologists, and other benighted…Read more
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1455Subvert the dominant paradigm!J. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI. 2002.We again press the case for computationalism by considering the latest in ill- conceived attacks on this foundational idea. We briefly but clearly define and delimit computationalism and then consider three authors from a new anti- computationalist collection.
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2074Role of the Frame Problem in Fodor's Modularity ThesisIn Kenneth M. Ford & Zenon W. Pylyshyn (eds.), The Robot's Dilemma Revisited: The Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence, Ablex. pp. 9. 1994.It is shown that the Fodor's interpretation of the frame problem is the central indication that his version of the Modularity Thesis is incompatible with computationalism. Since computationalism is far more plausible than this thesis, the latter should be rejected.
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190Fodor's gloom, or what does it mean that dualism seems true?Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 11 (2): 145-152. 1999.Any time you have philosophers working on a problem, you know you’ve got troubles. If a question has attracted the attention of the philosophers that means that either it is intractably difficult with convolutions and labyrinthine difficulties that would make other researchers blanch, or that it is just flat out impossible to solve. Impossible problems masquerade as intractable problems until someone either proves the problem is impossible (which can only happen in mathematics), or someone shows…Read more
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81Subvert the Dominant Paradigm!J. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI 15 (4): 375-382. 2003.We again press the case for computationalism by considering the latest in illconceived attacks on this foundational idea. We briefly but clearly define and delimit computationalism and then consider three authors from a new anticomputationalist collection.
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249A recent issue of Time magazine (March 29, 1999) was devoted to the twenty greatest "thinkers" of the twentieth century -- scientists, inventors, and engineers. There is one interesting omission: there are no cognitive psychologists or cognitive scientists. (Cognitive science is an amalgam of cognitive, neuro, and developmental psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, linguistics, biology, and anthropology.) Freud is there, to be sure. But, while he was very influential, it is not even c…Read more
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4012Review of David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (review)Minds and Machines 8 (3): 441-461. 1998.When Charles Darwin died in April, 1882, he left behind a world changed forever. Because of his writings, most notably, of course, The Origin of Species, by 1882, evolution was an almost universally acknowledged fact. What remained in dispute, however, was how evolution occurred. So because of Darwin’s work, everyone accepted that new species emerge over time, yet few agreed with him that it was natural selection that powered the change, as Darwin hypothesized. Chalmers’ book, The Conscious Mind…Read more
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1797Explanatory pluralism in cognitive scienceCognitive Science 33 (2): 739-742. 2009.This brief commentary has three goals. The first is to argue that ‘‘framework debate’’ in cognitive science is unresolvable. The idea that one theory or framework can singly account for the vast complexity and variety of cognitive processes seems unlikely if not impossible. The second goal is a consequence of this: We should consider how the various theories on offer work together in diverse contexts of investigation. A final goal is to supply a brief review for readers who are compelled by thes…Read more
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381Sisyphus's Boulder: Consciousness and the Limits of the KnowableJohn Benjamins. 2004.In Sisyphus's Boulder, Eric Dietrich and Valerie Hardcastle argue that we will never get such a theory because consciousness has an essential property that..
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431On the inappropriate use of the naturalistic fallacy in evolutionary psychologyBiology and Philosophy 18 (5): 669-81. 2003.The naturalistic fallacy is mentionedfrequently by evolutionary psychologists as anerroneous way of thinking about the ethicalimplications of evolved behaviors. However,evolutionary psychologists are themselvesconfused about the naturalistic fallacy and useit inappropriately to forestall legitimateethical discussion. We briefly review what thenaturalistic fallacy is and why it is misusedby evolutionary psychologists. Then we attemptto show how the ethical implications of evolvedbehaviors can b…Read more
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87In mid-May of 2001, I attended a fascinating workshop at Cold Spring Harbor Labs. The conference was held at the lab's Banbury Center, an elegant mansion and its beautiful surrounding estate, located on Banbury Lane, in the outskirts of Lloyd Harbor, overlooking the north shore of Long Island in New York. The estate was formerly owned by Charles Sammis Robertson. In 1976, Robertson donated his estate, and an endowment for its upkeep, to the Lab. The donation included the Robertson's mansion, now…Read more
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